If you are at a meal, throw down some cash like they used to in the old movies, and bounce.

If you are driving, pull over, take the keys and get a taxi.

Because the words that follow will be truly be the most enlightened cache of bullshit that will foul your mind.

These words precede the harmful effects of the friendly expert. No degree, no seniority, no sense. Nothing but heavy confidence in their own voice. Just before ill fated advice stinks up your whole day like loose Horse crap. Sound like anyone you know (besides me?)

So Phillip stood there in the flashing blue and red lights. Sweating and breathing hard. Staring off at a front door and never even acknowledging the police car idling right next to him in the middle of the street. He was in a trance. He was drunk. He was naked.

FOUR MONTHS PREVIOUS

Four months prior, Phillip was schooling me about women.

“ Yo, it’s like this Brandon, you don’t have the right woman because you need to understand power. A man is like the leader and a woman a general. Now she can work with him or against him…it all matters how strong he is,”

“So, love is the army?” I said.

“Ha-ha…see that’s why you ain’t got nobody. It ain’t about love it’s about making shit happen! See now my girl is down for me because I send her out to do my thing she believes in. She works so that we both can come up…”

“So you do the dishes?” I said.

“You don’t get it…”

He was right about that. I don’t get it. I never got it and came to terms with that a long time ago. I am weird, strange and quite difficult and while I inevitably apologize for DOING something stupid I don’t apologize for BEING stupid. I just try harder, which takes a certain amount of energy and understanding especially if you know that the universe is 50/50 fair…which means, thus, that you will lose half of the time!

But Phillip is one of those cats that rests his philosophy on being a big ‘ole Pimp! That men are men and do obviously male shit and that women compliment that with their own…uh shit. Okay I will admit that there are certain chromosome streaks in us which play out in certain behavior but can’t we all agree that Pimpage philosophy is a lie and intellectually lazy!

Can someone, ANYone, please send me the timeline when it became okay to use the pathologically psychotic and dysfunctional relationship between a pimp and his ho as the societal example we should all follow? When did it become the paradigm for success?

“Naw see that’s where you got it wrong. Every business move is a pimp move. Somebody is the pimp and somebody is the ho. Look, McDonald’s is full of crap right?”

“Right…”

“But every time you go in there it’s packed with people that know the same thing right?”

“Right…”

“They know it’s nasty and can kill you. There was even a movie about it. But still people are in there…packed. Handing over their cash for shit they know ain’t good for them. Why do you think that’s the way it is?”

“They put cocaine in the secret sauce?

“Naw, they’re being pimped. Yo but they know this and still go back for it. Now that’s a ho…If you understand game you know this…”

That’s another front…game. People who wanna make you feel out of it or themselves above it always quote “game”. Mind you they always quote it, like Phillip, from the PASSENGER side of the car or situation. The passenger side because his girl uses her Mazda Miata to PARK at work while I drive her man with me to some auditions.

Well…at least we know SHE got game.

Which brings me to the over riding point. The PIMP philosophy only works if the world is simplistic. Basically, down to, “Do what I say or I’ll beat your ass…” And when that sentiment was in play where were we…Black folk? When the American dream included a side of Manifest Destiny and “we’ll kill you to fulfill it”, where did that put us? Where was the Blackman?

Of course there were strong fighting Brothas who didn’t take that shit. Who fought back…but they weren’t pimps.

See, the problem with the McDonald’s theory is that Mc’ee D’s spikes its French fry grease and everything else with fat. And it’s easy and cheap. So cheap that few burger joints can compete. It’s done to the mom and pop hamburger stand what crack actually did to ho’s and …pimps.

To Phillip he was that CEO in a boardroom of two people that’ll rise up because of his leadership. He had gotten a little part on a show. She told him that in order to be wealthy you have to live within a wealthy district so he rented a far too expensive spot just below Melrose Ave. Yep THAT Melrose. I knew it was too expensive when, on one of our audition car pools he asked me for some change for a cigarette. “I’m getting a nicotine headache.”

Only thing I saw was a man without enough handy cash to buy a full pack of cigarettes. He couldn’t figure out why I laughed so hard. Until he asked me for some dough to help her with a tooth emergency. Hers. He had the look of a man whose means wasn’t beyond his misery. She was suffering from a volatile toothache and needed immediate attention. And cash. Luckily, that day, all I had was enough for the cigarettes.

Men abuse women. We have a bunch of laws that reflect that. Women the world over are abused unless some men somewhere in that society force the others to stop it. Pimps are not the protectors of virtue or honor or the future. They do not represent courage or skill. They are not self sufficient or independent and have very little in the way of progressive attitudes. Much like the drug dealer they cannot exist if the neighborhood they work out of becomes enlightened.

If sex for sale became legal in the US Pimps would be out of jobs and replaced by body guards and off duty cops.

The mention of the pimp philosophy as our “raison d’être” is stupid. Just dumb. I was trying to think of some grand way to say it but it’s just stupid. And Black people can never progress behind that logic. It is part of the whole cloth that has become a blind veil from behind which we are losing our foresight and hope.

How flawed is “Pimpology?”…Phillip lost his lil’ role…the show was cancelled…and thus the house went to. But here’s the kicker. She left…immediately…Which means that she had somewhere to go, immediately. Phil went from a three bedroom flat off of Melrose to a…a bar where he called me from. We all have bad patches so I wish I could say that I picked him up out of decency…Nope…I wanted to see how Pimpology handled adversity. He hauled into the car and slumped on the seat soaked in the cheapest Vodka regulations allow to be sold.

“Wassup? Thanks for comin’ thru. You the only friend I got!”

Not true, I mean his old buddy was now living with his ex but that doesn’t mean that they’re not friends!

“Yeah okay, where are we going?” I said.

“On Cochran and Venice…Eh I wanna show you something…”

Phillip then produced some pictures of his girl all smiley at a table in a club with a well dressed guy in a suit.

Then some more revealing ones in the bedroom. One…two…three…six…

Okay, in her rush to move exactly 3 miles from his place with his ex-best friend, said chickee had left a packet of pictures behind.

“See how that is maaaan? She said she wanted to go to the Bahamas to chill. SO I sends my girl to the Bahamas. You know that’s how I do it!”

Hold up…really? THAT’S the great index of Pimpology? Your general goes on a campaign in the Bahamas on your dime to cuckold you while you sit home in a dark apartment checking the sofa seats for cigarette money? And she takes her car keys with her?

“Stop here.”

Phil stumbled out into the street and stood there for a moment. I couldn’t talk much to keep from laughing. I mean such a belly laugh right in the face has been known to cause pimp-suicide. So I cruised off a bit when I noticed that he wasn’t leaving the middle of the street and pulled over.

“You want it all? Here take this shit!”

He threw the packet of pictures at the house which held together until it spread out like amateur porn confetti on the lawn.

“And this shit too!”

A shoe…then another one. Then his jacket, shirt, belt…you know for dead drunk he was surprisingly efficient in undressing. Never fell once.

“What else you want…Sheeeeellllaaa! Huh?”

And there he stood. Butt ass naked in the middle of a dark street and screaming at a front door. The Pimp.

You know, police lights often produce a volley of other lights. Porch lights. House lights. Even a little light inside one’s head that’s juuuuust bright enough to illuminate the facts that you’re naked, in the street and that your ex-girl probably didn’t hear you as she lives one block over. Plus that fact that the gun toting little old White man, who has now opened the door you’ve been screaming at, probably went to bed that night thinking that has seen it all but was rudely awakened to the contrary.

I stayed around long enough to see that the police were cool and let Phillip gather his clothes. Come to think of it no one probably wants a naked guy in their squad car. Phil kept telling them that I was around somewhere and kept calling my name. I never left my car. Never spoke to him again. He had mistaken me for his friend, chauffeur and ho. I drove off laughing at the real side of “Pimp”. Plus, I was hungry.